And yes, he's absolutely correct. Some advertisers such as the big Canadian banks aren't even hiding it now switching from announcing a boycott to a limited-time withdrawal: "Participating brands will suspend all advertising on the platform for the month of July."<p><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7129688/facebook-boycott-canada-banks/" rel="nofollow">https://globalnews.ca/news/7129688/facebook-boycott-canada-b...</a>
The cool thing about facebook’s highly targeted advertising is that it balances the ad market in favor of niche players vs. generalists, which also means they have a long long tail of millions of small buyers vs. a few huge ones who used to dominate traditional media.<p>Old marketing was carpetbombing, which meant only those with B-52 sized budgets could dominate. It was also deeply entwined with centralized high-volume distribution models, aligning the interests of big manufactures and big retailers.<p>Today’s marketing is precision bombing. You just need the right explosion in the right place. Likewise, internet distribution enables the economics of small manufacturers and small retailers (shopify/amz third-party).<p>Which is why big advertisers have done relatively poorly with internet ads. Their prior campaigns worked, not so much because they or the product were good, but because they could silence small competitors. Because retailers could only carry a limited amount of products they would favor the big mfgs who could provide bulk orders. Consumers just went for them because they had no other choice.<p>Today small player’s can advertise to narrow niches where rates are low. Likewise consumers can access products that better suit their specific needs/wants. What this means is that FB doesn’t really need or depend on big budget advertisers. Mark knows this.
Facebook has a long tail of 8 million advertisers (according to their earnings report).Some of the big ones leaving would mean that the relatively smaller ones would get better returns on spend (due to fewer bidders and lower top bid) and in turn spend more.<p>This does help the brands get a bit of free PR at Facebook's expense, given that many of them would have been planning to reduce the spend anyway due to Covid.
My interpretation of what's going on:<p>CEOs finally have leverage against their marketing departments to do black-out testing on social media ad spend. It's difficult to actually measure impact of ad spending, and marketing teams spin results to their advantage.<p>They will observe what happens and re-introduce spending where it actually works.
Facebook is funny because I generally agree and disagree with everyone. But people make their points so poorly, they have no sense of objectivity or analytical ability, that I’m dismayed by all sides by the lack of a principled approach.<p>90% of what people post about is a distraction and futile. I wish Facebook could motivate and inform people to attend local government meetings. Instead, it’s like an interactive tabloid magazine that we’re embedded in. We’re on the shelf in a Rite-Aid living in a world of ridiculousness as corporations pass by us and sell us stuff. 24 hours a day.
I work in marketing. Advertising markets are pretty damned efficient. If a bunch of advertisers pull out, rates come down, new advertisers come in.<p>There may be some affect, especially if big companies were spending inefficiently to build "awareness". But at the end of the day, the market rate for a click is the market rate. Someone will pay for it.
There is this very good article of Ben Thompson [1] predicting that Zuckerberg won't budge:<p>1/ large advertisers represent a small portion of FB's ad revenue<p>2/ if large advertisers leave and price of ads fall, other "social media ad-dependent businesses" will pick up the slack because they can measure very well their advertising return on investment thus driving the price of ads back up.<p>[1] <a href="https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-and-facebook/" rel="nofollow">https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-and-facebook/</a>
I am neither a FB user, employee or stockholder. FB has taken a lot of steps which I would not support personally; but how likely would it be for FB's bad policies to get more fanned by the old media(newspapers, news TV channels, influential blogs) because they have an axe to grind here. FB essentially disrupted the whole business model of old media and commoditizes old media entities. FB acts as a middleman, eats up revenue share and weakens the brand-user relationship, something no old media company will like.
Of course they will. The calculus has been done; the marketing boost from saying "we are pulling ads from Facebook (for X weeks)" apparently outweighs the actual value of those weeks of passive Facebook ads. And then things will be back to "business-as-usual" (although outrage marketing is business-as-usual).
Of course he's right. If anything I'm surprised advertisers aren't cutting back more given how much revenue they're probably losing during the pandemic.<p>Real change has to come from two sources. Firstly regulation, Facebook will never "self-regulate" and this corporate activism is a joke. And secondly, from employees who in sufficient numbers have at least some leverage.
He is 100% correct. These advertisers have gotten millions of dollars in free PR for the "boycott" but that last won't long for most of them.
FB executives knows the numbers, and knows how to play them out. They also know how far reaching their platform is, and how well they are able to target the intended customers of the businesses.<p>They have also proven time and again that their targeted ads generate the results these businesses need. Pausing a month or two of ads does not hurt their bottom line. They could simply take a hit on those months and when these businesses go back, they could (again play the numbers) and charge more to recoup those losses.<p>The FB platform has grown so big that they know even if they lose one big business, the same could be replaced by 10 or 100 or even 1000 small businesses which will allow them to simply get the same amount being paid by the big companies.
Such a statement shows, that he still has learned nothing, specifically not responsibility. For Zuckerberg it needs to financially hurt, in order to cause ethical decisions.<p>Well, such kind of statement will hopefully also prolong the boykott, because no one will want to seem like the beaten dog, beaten. ack into line. Hopefully the boykott will even increase.
And he has reason to be optimistic.<p>As per the UK's recent review into competition, 80% of online advertising spend in the UK at least, is spent with Google and Facebook [0]<p>So, perhaps in his mind it hurts them more than it hurts Facebook<p>[0] <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-regime-needed-to-take-on-tech-giants" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-regime-needed-to-take...</a>
Advertisers certainly will be back, because their public support for the cause du jour is simply a rational decision to make money/avoid losing money. When established corporations support your cause, you should be worried, because what you think you're getting isn't what you're going to get, the status quo.
Whilst companies have discussed pulling out of Facebook, for the most part they're neither discussing, nor implementing exits from Instagram.<p>As Instagram makes up an increasing amount of Facebook's revenue, the reality is that they're rather unconcerned. This is part of the cycle.
<a href="https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/group-boycotts" rel="nofollow">https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...</a><p>This advocacy for a group boycott raises anti-trust concerns, IMO. While it is not aimed at getting <i>price</i> concessions, it is aimed at getting <i>other</i> concessions in terms of the public perception of the context of the advertisements bought. This is a material contractual term, and organizing a group boycott to coerce concessions from Facebook to their business partners seems problematic on anti-trust grounds.
Of course they will. All of the "boycotts" but one I've seen were until of the month, and the way it's worded, they probably won't even stop using it, just putting money into their account.
Look, I'm not going to lie: I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook and the way it structured it's closed groups or how it allows posts to go 'viral'. I think there's a lot of negativity that comes from 'viral' posts.<p>But does anyone realistically think you could put Facebook in charge of moderating all content in the 500+ or so languages on there? With 3 billion users?<p>It would mean the end of all open communications platforms that we've seen since 2000s.
My conspiracy theory mind tells me this is just brands doing a show of power to end up paying less for ads.
Plus scoring a PR win.
The bad part is that it encourages Facebook and others to do more aggressive automatic moderation, which has low precision and deletes accounts of people merely mentioning sensitive topics.
Facebook is taking a firm stance NOW. But I imagine they will end up singing a different tune if enough companies join the boycott to drop their ad revenues by 20%.<p>Cuts in ad buys directly hurt their profits, because ad sellers (and data collection firms) are their primary customers. Users are just a commodity that enables Facebook to sell ads and harvest data.
I think it's pretty plain this has to do with politics.<p>It's group-bullying of Facebook. But Zuck's right-- Facebook has a huge audience, and they will keep using the platform. If some advertisers don't want to pay, their competitors will.<p>I hate bullying. I hope Facebook profits out of all this.
Of course they will. It's called performance marketing for a reason. You can track your marketing invest down to the penny. Who cares if they're evil. I believe that this is mostly a small little kindle that will burn out soon, and not a huge wildfire for Facebook.
On a related note I just saw someone on Twitter mentioning this report that was just released that does a real deep dive into how the problems associated with hate speech have played out on the ground in India. [1]<p>It's grim reading and I think it is a huge slap in the face to that ridiculous corporate propaganda piece they released the other day saying that they don't profit from hate speech.<p>I'd encourage people to have a read of this, I often see these Facebook threads become extremely abstract and quickly becomes derailed about principles of free speech and the conversation just runs around in circles.<p>Instead this is a very concrete instance of a problem that is really happening and in concerning numbers around the world (i.e. the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar) that is directly aided by Facebook.<p>I want to instead have the conversation about what should we do about this particular problem and it's variations? Should brands factor these kinds of problems into their marketing strategies?<p>[1] <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58347d04bebafbb1e66df84c/t/5d018607143f4a000121707e/1560380939010/Facebook_India_Report_Equality_Labs.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58347d04bebafbb1e66df...</a>
Here's the business case why advertisers wouldn't want to enter the boycott, beyond just losing their fb sales:<p>1) Facebook has had a number of negative sounding news cycles in the past few years (Cambridge Analytica, etc.), and data shows that the average American hasn't changed their behavior based on them. 70% of all Americans and Canadians use Facebook or Instagram at least once a month, and 55% of all Americans and Canadians use it at least once per day. Facebook's monthly and daily user counts have only grown.<p>2) Facebook has done a better job than many in blocking hate speech. They can always do better, but I'd be worried about scope creep. If Facebook makes changes that the boycott organizers don't think are enough, it could make advertisers in the boycott a target if they start spending on FB again later. One key risk is if the boycott demands they start deleting Trump's posts, like Twitter did. If that happens, it would potentially put any boycotters in an unpleasant media cycle.<p>3) Most of the advertisers joining so far are companies that either are progressive at their roots (Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, The North Face) or want to cut ad spend in a COVID environment anyway (Verizon, Unilever). For instance, Unilever is also pausing Twitter ads, which has nothing to do with the boycott.<p>4) Right now the general public does not associate most companies with FB ads. Joining the list will remind people who are passionate about this issue that their company does FB ads at all, which they don't currently think about.<p>So all the above combined makes me conclude that joining the boycott offers few advantages, but presents real risks.
My take is that since many people increase their cellphone usage, some renown brands do not need advertising as they may already seen increase in online sales, hence could be a good reason to cut in ads and be politically correct
Last two things I got from FB Ads:<p>"Smart" Wallet in Nov 2019: Never arrived. Owner now keeps posting dramatic posts without issuing anyone a refund.<p>Bamboo Socks: Never arrived. No email after the first order confirmation last year. No nothing.
If my direct competition is partaking in this boycott, I'm doubling down on my facebook ad-spend. Great opportunity to steal customers from your competition while they are worried about posturing.
All I can do is imagine Jesse Eisenberg saying this. There are other channels you can push your spend through with decent ROI. Nobody's platform be it a personal blog or small app is without analytics anymore.<p>Shorting Facebook: FB 210p 7/10
I hope he doesn’t cave in. All the companies who signed onto the campaign to stop advertising on Facebook are essentially against the fundamental principles freedom of speech and expression. I don’t plan to buy from them any longer, because they’re normalizing censorship.